And then the boat’s light found Hamish… It was a magic moment. A miracle moment.
May cried out with shock and joy-but it was too much for her to take in. She was so shocked that her stomach reacted.
Doug handed her a sick-bag but she was left to fend for herself as they started to fasten Grady into his harness.
‘You reckon you can get in close enough to be safe?’ Grady demanded of his pilot, and Max nodded.
‘I think so. What I’ll do is go above the level of the cliff. We’ll lower you from there so if the wind gusts up, we won’t get slammed into the rockface.’
‘Thanks very much,’ Grady told him, knowing it was he who’d hit rock. But that was OK. He knew enough to ward off rock with his boots-hell, he’d practised this manoeuvre a hundred times.
‘I guess we could land and lower someone from dry land,’ Doug said, and Grady looked out, considering.
‘We’ll get the dogs off that way in the morning. But the land up there’s too rocky to get close and I want the kid up now.’
They all did. The boy looked fine-wonderful, even-standing yelling at the helicopter for all he was worth-but he’d been alone for too long already.
The way he was yelling spoke of hysteria.
‘You’ll get him,’ May whispered from the reaches of her sick-bag, and Grady put a hand on her shoulder and gripped, hard.
‘I’ll have him with you in minutes. The dogs will have to wait…’
‘Dogs?’
But she didn’t get further. The radio crackled into life. ‘Robbie’s in the water,’ a man snapped.
What?
The boat’s floodlights had suddenly veered downward. Max hauled the chopper outward. ‘Get me beams below,’ he yelled.
‘Who…?’ May was almost incoherent.
But Grady wasn’t listening. He was lying on his stomach on the chopper floor, staring straight down. A tiny copper-coloured head.
And then…
‘She’s going in,’ Doug yelled.
Grady turned toward the boat.
And Morag was in the water.
Morag surfaced, spluttering for air in the foam. She was being washed against the rocks, and she had to get clear, through the gap to where she’d last seen Robbie.
At least the floodlights let her see, in the tiny fractions of time when the surf receded.
To her left…a gap in the rocks.
She turned and a breaker bore down on her. She duck-dived, then surfaced again.
Now.
With every ounce of strength she possessed, she swam for the gap. Let her get to mid-gap before the next breaker struck…
It struck and she was washed forward, tumbled into the cauldron of foam.
Somehow she surfaced, hoping desperately she was where she’d aimed to be.
There was no reason in the surge of the water. There was no gap between breakers. The surf was like a giant washing machine-worse, a washing machine with jagged rocks and no bottom to hope to find a footing.
And somewhere here…Robbie?
‘Robbie?’ She was screaming into the dark and the terror of the unknown. ‘Robbie!’
The lights were focusing-from both boat and helicopter. She was suddenly in a flood of brilliant light, but she couldn’t see.
‘Robbie?’
A wall of water smashed against her, driving her back against the rocks she’d just surged past. She felt her leg buckle and a shard of pain shot through her leg.
She’d thought she’d had room for no more sensation. Wrong.
‘Robbie!’
She struck out, forward, into the centre of the cauldron. Away from the rocks.
‘Robbie…’
A hand clutched her hair.
She was jerked sideways, but she didn’t hesitate. All the times of her childhood, with her father on the beach where they’d practised surf lifesaving drill, came to the fore. When grabbed, grab back. Hard. Under the arm, lift, break, turn. Face the victim away from you, and move with force. You’re no help to anyone if you drown.
Over and over her father had practised the manoeuvre with both Beth and Morag. Even aged seven or eight, she could break away from a grown man.
So now the hand gripping her head was struck upward but seized at the same time. Robbie? It had to be Robbie.
She hauled him round so he was facing away from her. And, gloriously, she felt him respond to her hold. She felt him curve into her.
Then, for the first time, she could accept that she’d found him.
‘It’s Morag,’ she screamed. ‘Don’t fight me. Robbie, don’t fight.’
He didn’t. The hand that had reached for her must have contained the last ounce of strength he possessed.
He slumped.
She clung on.
Another wave smashed her forward. Her right leg wouldn’t work-wouldn’t move. The pain… She was treading water with one leg-that was all she could do. Her lifejacket was holding her up, sort of, but the tumult of water was making it almost impossible to breathe.
She still had a line holding her, and the line was attached to the boat, but a lot of use that was. If they tried to drag her back through the gap…
They couldn’t. They’d know it.
She had to stay out of the range of the rocks.
Another wave jarred her forward. A submerged rock struck her leg, and she heard herself crying out again.
In her arms Robbie stirred and whimpered.
He was still OK, she thought. He was still alive. All she had to do was hold on.
Grady would come.
Please…
‘Two lines.’ Grady was out on the skids already. ‘Just hand me two lines.’
‘I’ll come in with you.’ Doug was clipping a harness in place at Grady’s front so all he had to do was find someone, pull them into the harness and be dragged back up. Simple…
‘Yeah, and who’ll operate the line?’ Grady was feeling sick. Of all the times for them to be flying without their full complement… All Max’s attention had to be on the helicopter, maintaining its hover, and he needed Ron on the spotlight. Elsey had gone with Hazel to make sure she was settled in William’s cottage-and also to surreptitiously check on William-and there’d been no time to wait.
Usually, if there were two in the water they’d both go in. But that was in open seas. Two people in that maelstrom below them would be no use at all. It’d only add to the confusion and double the risk.
Doug knew it. He held Grady by the shoulder for a fraction of a moment and gripped, hard.
‘Go.’
Her leg was dragging her down.
How could a leg drag her down? She was wearing a life jacket. She had Robbie securely under his arms,
